Is the day of the long-awaited cruise finally approaching? I’m sure you’ve been eagerly anticipating this moment and can’t wait to board the ship.
However, to have a smooth and seamless boarding process, it is important to prepare well for this day.
You need to plan your travels carefully, review the schedule thoroughly, and even take into account any unforeseen events.
Below, I’ve created a guide with everything you need to know about embarkation day, with special attention on how long before you should arrive and how to plan your schedule accordingly.
Will I have an assigned boarding time or can I arrive whenever I want?
This may seem like a trivial question for those who have been on a cruise recently, but it is actually quite an interesting question.
In fact, until a few years ago, cruise lines were much more flexible with embarkation time. They generally gave the option to embark when you wanted by leaving a very wide window, for example, the whole morning.
Over time, it was noticed that this method caused long waits. All passengers arrived early in the morning to get on the ship as soon as possible, and there was a lot of hustle and bustle.
Recently, almost all cruise lines give a well-defined time slot in which you can embark. It can be assigned automatically or you can choose it during the online check-in process.
The best time to board a cruise ship
Let’s now move on to a very important question: if I have the possibility to choose, when is the best time to embark?
I would say it depends on you. If you wanna be the first one and you want to make the most of your time on the ship, then you definitely need to go to the port early in the morning.
However, there are two problems to consider: the journey to the port and the long lines.
If you live far away and have to travel for a long time, I would advise against getting up at night to get to the ship first. You would risk ruining the rest of the day by being too tired.
Secondly, since everyone wants to get there early, there are very long lines in the morning and you may have to wait a long time standing. For this reason, I do not recommend it for elderly people or people who cannot stand for too long.
In my experience, the best time to board is between 1 and 3 pm. I have noticed that this time is usually less chaotic and there are very few people in line.
You can find more amongst the 20 cruise ship embarkation day do’s and don’ts.
How early should you arrive?
Consider one thing, before embarkations begin, the ship’s staff must take care of the disembarkations.
The cruise staff only starts boarding new passengers once all the guests from the previous trip have disembarked.
Usually, disembarkation wraps up by 10 am so boarding procedures start at around 10:30.
If you have a specific slot for embarkation, I recommend that you aim to arrive about 2/3 hours in advance, that way you will have enough time even if there is some unforeseen event.
The important thing is not to arrive less than an hour before the ship’s departure; in that case, you would likely miss it.
To avoid problems I always recommend getting cruise-specific travel insurance. I’ve explained how to choose the best one in this article.
In addition, make sure you don’t have any of the items that are always confiscated when boarding cruises. If you get held up at security, you could end up wasting a lot of time.
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